‘Imagine if we took intimate and family violence as seriously as we take other forms of sadistic abuse.’
Photograph: Jay Janner/AP

It’s a sad indictment of the United States that mass shootings are no longer surprising, and the dead have to total in the double digits for gun attacks to even break through the news cycle.

The latest mass shooting, carried out in Texas by a man who should have never had a gun in the first place and who murdered 26 people in a church, comes just over a month after another shooter massacred 58 concert-goers in Las Vegas. The Texas shooter, Devin P Kelley, fits the mold of most high-profile American mass killers before him: white, angry and male. Also: a domestic abuser.

The connection between mass shootings and intimate or domestic violence is well-established

Kelley beat, kicked and choked his wife, repeatedly threatened her with a loaded gun, and cracked his infant stepson’s skull. That was enough to get him kicked out of the air force, where he served during the abuse, and sentenced to 12 months’ confinement. The domestic violence conviction should have stripped him of his right to own guns, but, through error or lax enforcement, he was nonetheless able to acquire multiple weapons. And then he slaughtered 26 people.

The pathologically violent often start close to home, with their animals, wives and children. And the connection between mass shootings and intimate or domestic violence is well-established: most mass shootings involve a man aiming for a family member, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group.

Of course not every man who beats his wife or girlfriend eventually goes on a shooting spree. But a disturbing proportion of men who go on shooting sprees have beaten their wives and girlfriends.

In the aftermath of mass shootings, there are calls to focus on a list of culprits: America’s near-total lack of adequate gun laws, mental illness, a lack of “good guys with guns,” and now, domestic violence.

A long list of notorious mass shooters have accusations or convictions for violence against women in their pasts, and it’s not surprising that someone who would shoot up a room full of innocent people would also beat up his wife or girlfriend. Of course we should address the warning signs of violent mass acts, and laws barring previously violent people from owning guns are no-brainers (even if they are largely opposed by pro-gun groups, most notably the NRA).

But we should also deal with domestic violence because it’s violence, period.

Despite decades of feminist work to get intimate partner violence taken seriously, Americans – individuals and law enforcement – still seem to put it in a category that’s less serious than “regular” assault. And we forgive it easily: just look at the easily rehabilitated careers of Chris Brown, Dr Dre and Johnny Depp.

Ray Rice was allowed back into the NFL and entered into a financial settlement because he says he was injured after being suspended for beating his then-fiancee unconscious on camera. Despite a long history of domestic violence accusations, Floyd Mayweather still makes millions.

Few people would defend domestic violence as “private”, like self-identified family values advocates told feminists in the bad old days. But too many still treat it that way. It’s uncomfortable; the intimacy of attacking a person you profess to love allows us to brush it away as “complicated”. Maybe she did something to provoke him, the thinking goes; we just don’t know what went on. These justifications ring out even when there are photos of a woman’s battered face; even when there’s video.

We also know that while domestic violence can be a precursor to mass gun violence, gun ownership makes domestic violence many times more deadly: women are much more likely to be killed by an abusive partner if that partner has a gun. And half of women who are murdered in the United States are killed by an intimate partner.

Imagine if we took intimate and family violence as seriously as we take other forms of sadistic abuse. Imagine if women weren’t subtly encouraged to blame ourselves, and weren’t blamed by others for wanting justice (after all, one of the reasons an incident of partner violence may not be prosecuted is because victims, worried about ruining a man’s life, don’t want to go forward).

Imagine if our legal system wasn’t simply punitive – if women could report abuse at the hands of a man who claims to love us and know he would face not just punishment, but the expectation that he behave better in the future, and the tools to do just that.

Imagine if guns were harder to get for everyone, and impossible to access legally for – and actively confiscated from – men who had ever laid a hand on anyone.

Yes, that could prevent a whole lot of mass shootings. But it would first prevent many more of the smaller-scale targeted ones that end women’s lives in the United States at a staggering clip.